UKH

You see some great photos on here. When looking at the voting you can work out some people must be voting low when it's obviously not an average or poor photo. 

Is there a reason people do this? Would non anon voting stop this? 

And lo! The thread did return in an alternate form. And the Lord saw that is was good.

I've just experienced this with a photo I've just posted. Not a great pic, but good enough, 1st photo of the route and (I Think) the crag. Some beggar has given it a 2 or possibly a 1, and it's definitely better than that. 

I don't care, but it's a disappointment for my daughter, who took it. So I don't see why votes should  be anonymous, either.

It's not Instagram, does the voting really matter?

I would say no, however the very best (most votes, not necessarily the best) do get a chance at some cool Marmot kit at the end of every year. So there is incentive to get your photos voted high and, sadly, competition voted low.

It certainly happens. I posted a good photo of some sea cliff climbing and it obviously got some reasonable votes of 4/5 then really dipped so obviously also got some 1/2. Does it matter.. Well it shouldn't, but it does. I removed the picture thinking 'screw this'.

I also find it weird that crap historic photo's generally get high scores. They are important historical images of stuff, but 90% are crap photographs when considering whether actually a good photograph or not. I presume it's because a high proportion of viewers / voters are of that era and it rekindles memories of that time. 

I don't think you can vote for photos in the historical section...

If it's a great photo, I'll score it a 5. If it's an average or poor photo (in my opinion), it doesn't get any score at all. I don't see the point of anonymously slapping photographers down with a 1 or 2 without accompanying constructive criticism and my name above that comment. 

People but them in the normal (climbing or alpine) section and they get votes like anything else. Theres been quite a few lately that then end up in the top 10 briefly 

I'll take your word for it. I've always posted mine in the historical section because ... they're historic. I don't claim any artistic merit for them.

What amazes me is that some sunset photos automatically get high votes but are nothing special. Likewise with a pic of someone famous on a very hard route scores high but the actual photo is quite ordinary. There has to be something else. Then again some of B&W photos get low scores because people prefer colour. Composition, vision, creativity, technical, excellence and originality is what should be the deciding criteria. 

Maybe I should remove the word 'crap', but yes, a poor photo from a 'scoring' point of view, and yet it gets a 5, but may be important in the fact it's quite old and has some other historical importance!

In my view the problem is the voting system. It's designed to get clicks rather than provide a democracy. As there is instant feedback when someone votes, some folk will vote a high photo low and vice versa to have an impact. I wonder what would happen if the total votes were provided once a week say. I think it would more accurately show what people really think of a photo, that's providing everyone didn't up sticks waiting for the week to end.

I suspect the proportion of voters that click to have impact is minute; that most voters are trying to give the fairest possible scores. Personally, I am completely impervious to how others have voted. But your suggestion to only show the collective results once a week (or not until the final weekly ranking) is quite a good one. 

I am always quite heartened by how close my rankings are compared with the overall weekly rankings.

Not convinced about that John. Snow, sunsets and faraway places seem to be most heavily favoured. I'm interested to see photos of little visited routes or crags and more likely to notice them and hit the star button.

To the OP, yes, I'd noticed that in the last month someone has been systematically banging 2's on everything in.sight. wouldn't mind, but some of mine were worth at least a 2 and a half...

I agree, and also think that people are more likely to vote for impact early on in the voting, as less votes overall means a single vote has more impact, obviously. For what it's worth, these days I am definitely not impervious to how others have voted. For instance, say a photo has been given a 5 and I initially disagree, I'll spend time considering this, and the longer I spend, the more likely I am to agree and resipricate in my own voting, having the view that I'm doing someone a favour, and also that there are other photos requiring votes today.

The photo galleries are plagued by malicious down-voting. I know of several keen and excellent photographers who no longer post their photos here for us to enjoy because they are fed up with it. I actually noticed that one of them posted a great photo for the first time in ages yesterday (I imagine to test the water), but later took it down, presumably because it got the old down-vote treatment.

The frustrating thing is that there is a simple solution to the problem with no drawbacks - just make all votes positive in the sense that any vote increases a photo's ranking score (maybe *good, ** excellent, *** stunning); if you don't like a photo, don't vote for it. Down-voting would be impossible and the problem would vanish. The photo galleries would immediately become, quite literally, a more positive and happier place. It is hard to see how that could not be a good thing.

Doubly frustrating is that UKC seem unwilling to acknowledge that there is a problem or that there is a solution. I contacted them a few months ago about the issue and offered my solution. The response actually claimed that all votes are already positive. When I pointed out that this is demonstrably false - just vote 1 for a high-scoring photo and watch it drop down the rankings, then delete the vote and watch it jump back up - I received no response (even though I noticed this test being done on one of my own photos shorty afterwards!).

Of course people will say that it is only a tiny minority of voters down-voting (which is true), so doesn't matter, but it is a fact that a single down-vote can have a disproportionate effect on photo's ranking. With fewer people voting nowadays, it is regularly possible to get POTW with only 20 to 30 votes and a single down-vote can effectively knock a photo out of contention.

Yes, for two reasons.

Firstly, the voting provides the service of roughly sorting the photos by quality, so that the best ones appear on the top page by ranking and are enjoyed for longer by more people. Without this, good photos would rapidly disappear down the pages into obscurity (I doubt many people bother looking far beyond the top page or two.

Secondly it provides a fun and friendly weekly competition (feeding into an annual competition) which many of us enjoy. Unfortunately this is regularly spoiled by the down-voting wreckers (they are like older  kids amusing themselves by repeatedly kicking the ball away when younger kids are trying to enjoy a game of football in the park).

I don't think that is a good idea. It would lose the continuous sorting of the photos roughly by quality. Also, without this, there would be a lot more luck involved in how much exposure a photo got near the top of the front page (depending on how soon afterwards lots more photos get posted).

Given no 2 people's criteria for what makes a good photo is the same I'd disagree with this, also the point about disappearing into obscurity means you're more likely to get a self perpetuating set of "good" photos as they're the ones people see and vote for before they get bored.

Fair enough point regards the competition element, I'd not realised there were prizes attached to it, it does give people more incentive to downvote others photos.

Yes, generic sunsets do seem to automatically get an extra star. In contrast, subtlety is, I think, often undervalued by voters.

I don't think I object to famous climbers or routes being of particular interest and therefore attracting votes. Likewise historical interest.

Beauty? Impact?

Of course peoples' taste varies but I think that there is probably adequate consensus for very few good photos (by any reasonable standards) not to make the top 1 or 2 pages.

Yes there will be an element of self-perpetuation, but I think the sorting effect so that more people enjoy the good photos is worth it.

There are no weekly prizes - just the fun of it. There are only prizes for the annual Marmot competition.

I would be very sad to think that the malicious down-voting is done by other "rival" photographers in the weekly competition - surely we are all in it to see and appreciate others' photos. I assumed it is done by mindless wreckers perhaps with personal grudges.

Don't do yourself down Alan. One or two are definitely solid 3's

I presumed that all votes were positive. Even if they are all positive, I low vote will obviously bring the average down, and that is how it seems to me. So I am doubtful about your so-called "down votes" that you imply are negative. Perhaps the administrators could clarify how the scoring algorithm works here.

The photos have a score calculated from the votes given. This will depend on both the average vote and the number of votes (it is hard tell exactly how they are weighted). This actual score is published for the top ten photos by score each week and all the photos are ranked continuously by this score as viewed under "voting". The fact that, as I said, a low vote sends a photo down the rankings proves that a low vote is, in this sense, negative - it reduces the photo's score. So malicious down-voting is possible.

A simple entirely positive voting system would be, as I suggested, a three star system with a photo's score being the total number of stars awarded; any vote would increase a photo's score. You could even have a simple one star "like" system.

Just hover the mouse pointer over the relevant Voting Star and it tells you what it is:
⭐ = Dislike
⭐⭐ = Not Keen
⭐⭐⭐ = Average
⭐⭐⭐⭐ = Good
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = Superb

Why not just align the Star Rating system to the one we use for routes?
It's familiar to everyone and therefore the perceived quality of the photo is obvious.

That is a good point. Maybe some people are assuming that one star is a positive vote for photo when it is in fact far more damaging to a photo's ranking score than not voting at all (ie negative)

I presumed that scoring was as you propose in your last paragraph: that the scores for each photo were the total number of stars awarded. Do you know how the current algorithm works, or are you speculating?

I am very aware of those verbal descriptions, which are in line with how I vote. But I still presumed that the score for each category was positive and based directly on the number of stars, i.e., "dislike" = 1 positive score, "not keen" = +2, etc.  But you and other posters are suggesting that my presumption is wrong and the scoring is something like, -2 for dislike, -1 for not keen, 0 for average, +1 for good, +2 for superb. I would like this clarified by the administrators, because if the scoring is indeed like the latter system, I myself would probably stop voting or only vote for "good" and "superb" photos.

I don't know how it works but it certainly takes into account number of votes (4 x 5* beats 3 x 5*) and some sort of weighted average of the votes (3 x 5* beats 3 x 4*). I do seem to remember from a discussion a number of years UKC admitting that the person who made up the algorithm had left and that nobody any longer now knew how it works! Though I would have thought a computer type ought to be able to dig it out. Definitely time to start again with a transparent and entirely positive system.

Have a look at any gallery, click the button to sort the photos by vote instead of by date and what you'll see suggests that you're quite right about that. 

Photos with one star are placed above those with no votes at all.  Photos with multiple 2-star votes are placed above photos with a single 3-star vote.  As far as the ranking system is concerned it does look very much like a single 1-star vote will place a photo higher than all the ones that have no votes at all.

If 1 and 2 star votes were genuinely "down" votes then the photos that have attracted no votes at all would rank equally with the '3's.  It seems very much to me that the system as it stands is already 'entirely positive'. 

Or at least it would be with the entirely cosmetic alteration of changing those alt-text captions so that instead of ranging from "dislike" to "superb" they start from "ok" instead.

So it is actually rather complicated in that case. A photo getting a 5 and 1 scores lower than a photo just with the 5. So a 1 pulls down a photo with a 5 but pulls up a photo with no votes. 

But yes, total number of votes also counts; multiple 2's beat a single 3 and multiple 4's beat a single 5. 

It is just possible that enough 1's might beat a single 5 for all I know!

Anyway, the system certainly allows down-votes (including malicious ones) of good photos (low numbers of low votes dragging down a photo with multiple 5's.).

It is demonstrably not. I have just voted 1 for the photo "Lakeland Idyll" currently ranked 9th under "voting". It dropped to 14th. So my vote had a negative effect. (I then deleted the vote and it went back to 9th).

I'm not sure that UKC sees transparency as a virtue.

To be honest I don't think I've seen the view you mention, must have a look for that sometime. However, I don't see why the votes couldn't be continually collated and associated with a photo and therefore sorting by quality could continue. The rating and number of votes could be removed and displayed at the end of the week. I'm not suggesting this as a way forward by the way, I understand it will never happen as it doesn't seem to me the main purpose of the voting system.

Maybe the simple "like" system mentioned by Robert is the way to go?

If the photos are still displayed in rank order at any one time, I think that would only make a marginal difference to people's voting patterns; a lot of the information is still there.

I think a lot of people effectively already use a "like" system - 5 for a really good photo or nothing. It is what I do anyway (I very rarely give a 4 and never less which I see as more often than not downvoting - I like to keep things positive). If all votes were guaranteed positive using the simple three three star system I suggested, I would probably vote for far more photos using all three stars.

Same here. Don't think I've ever gone below 4*. 😐

That isn't because a 1-star vote is a 'negative' vote, it's because the score is based on an average in some way and 1 is less than 5.  Obviously if a photo has only 5-star votes so far then any vote other than a 5 will reduce its average.

If you want a system that does not involve taking any kind of an average, then you're more or less advocating ranking photos on a simple sum of the votes aren't you?  As a result, 11 x 1-star votes will rank a photo higher than 2 x 5-star votes.  I'm not at all sure that's any better, and if photos are displayed in the order that they're ranked then a truly terrible photo at the top of the table can only attract a lot more 1-star votes and before you know it an out-of-focus picture of a belayer's feet will be photo of the week.

I'm at a loss to see how moving from a 5-star system to a 3-star system would make any difference in itself.  That's just reducing the resolution a bit and a 1-star vote could just as easily be seen as a 'downvote' as it is now.  Somehow I doubt it would be long before you were right back here again complaining that someone had given a 'malicious' 1 to a photo of yours that you think should be a solid 3.

The bottom line is that there's no objective way to measure the quality of a photograph, and it's human nature that a beauty contest will always be a popularity contest to some extent too.

You make a lot of good points. But why should voting be anonymous? Then at least you'd have an inkling that low voting might be for reasons other than intrinsic merit. Anonymity is bit of a coward's charter, really.

It can be negative in the sense that I described - it is possible for a vote to push a photo down the rankings and I would like to see all votes increase a photo's ranking so that the malicious down-voting that spoils the system would be impossible. If all voting were guaranteed to be in good faith then a system which makes use of an average vote would be fine.

Not necessarily a simple sum but yes, every vote adding to the ranking score is what I am in favour off.

No system is going to be perfect. Perhaps 3 stars could score 15 points, 2 stars 5 points and 1 star 1 point or something to weight the system towards higher votes.

No, because the system would work like the star system for routes is supposed to work - a crap photo would get no or very few votes; one star is still only supposed to be for a good photo.

I only chose 3 stars arbitararily. 5 stars or even 10 stars would work just as well as long as all votes add to a photo's ranking score (though I think there is some merit in simplicity - there is a good case for a simple "like" system which would eliminate the possible problem you pointed out with 11 x 1-star beating 2 x 5-stars).

No, because as I have repeatedly said it would be impossible for anyone to down-vote a photo - the worst anyone could do would be not to vote at all; the malicious voters would become no different to to all the other users who don't vote.

Of course.

I don't really have an opinion on that either way, but my experience of Facebook suggests that removing the anonymity wouldn't necessarily make things any more harmonious.

I actually think that most of  what he said showed that he simply misunderstood what I am proposing!

With an entirely positive system I think anonymity would be fine (no need to flush out the malicious voters because they would no longer exist) and I actually think anonymity might discourage some good faith positive voters from voting. 

Name and shame I say!

Incidently, if I had to pick out a crag for the most stunning photography it has to be Raven Tor (peak). Every climber here is fighting to maintain contact with the rock. Just amazing set of pics!

You voted 88% 5, 4% 4, 2% 3, 1% 2 and 2% 1.

I voted a few low scores quite a few years ago before I decided that low voting was not a good thing for the photo galleries. I haven't done so for a number of years.

Likewise I haven't used the dislike button in these forums for several years since I decided its use is bad for good, healthy and interesting discussion.

Oops! I meant lack of anonymity!

I'm not sure I understand why anonymity is such a good thing - whether voting for photos, likes/dislikes or even posts themselves. Doesn't it just actively encourage trolling and other anti-social behaviour? Could somebody explain the benefits?

There are non, if someone is so sure of their view. Then they should be happy to have a name to it.

I think there is a case for no anonymity for negative votes to discourage the malicious down-voting, but probably not for positive votes. Under the positive system I would like to see there would be no problem with anonymity.

Likewise I would be happy to see anonymity removed for dislikes in the forums. 

9 out of 24 pics in this week's top photos are sunsets, of which I rate only one!

You can't account for taste.

Would ignoring be better than voting 1? 

I didn't waste my time on that.

I've nothing against a nice sunset, but how Nick Livesey's exquisite photo is languishing on a 4 in 21st place defeats me. 

I vote according to how much I like the climber's rockboots; with a bonus mark for anyone using a pink tricam.

Isn't that what everyone else does? 

I gave this a 4. Nice landscape and light but not stunning. I'm sure Nick knows what I mean. The one I gave a 5 was 'Just before the rain came'. Very difficult to get the exposure just right on this. The action and lighting are good. But couldn't the climber just walk around the side and get up the easy way?

No, not stunning, but beautifully subtle and, above all, authentic in a way which Nick so consistently achieves.

I've just finished running what has tuned out to be one of the largest photography competitions globally. We had eight of the best landscape photographers going and all of them are pretty IT literate. The voting was all over the shop. Voting is essentially doomed without context, instruction, etc. and with the general public involved you'll rarely get something better than 'ooh pretty 5*' and 'oh not that great but you're a mate 5*' responses. 

I would propose a system that might work.

1) ease of use and understanding is absolutely critical. To that extent, having anything more that 'like' and 'love' is going to confuse people. 

2) images with something interesting going on end up trumping amazing images - hence you need to add a differentiator for them. Perhaps an 'informative' button or such like.. 

3) Average scoring is pain but with a two flag system (like and love) then averaging these with 1 or 2 stars isn't such a bad idea. You can weight the system in various ways. You could square root the number of two stars (so that as you quadruple the number of 1* the influence only doubles) but I'm not sure it's worth it. 

4) I've seen a system that makes voting more difficult for higher scores.. i.e. a like is a quick click, for a 'love' you need to click and wait for 5 seconds... 

Inevitably a scoring system will fail if the criteria aren't absolutely solid and the voters buy into them. This will never happen in a public voting system. Interesting beats beautiful, local beats foreign, friends beat strangers, etc kittens beat everything.

As I reiterated above,  there's no accounting for (bad) taste. Hence a pretty girl, sunset, or snowscene always goes down well on this site. Get too creative, or a different take and others just don't see it. Everyone thinks they are a photographer when they handle a camera but it's what goes on between the ears that really counts.

I don't really have a problem with people's taste or what grabs them in a photo on here as long as they are voting in good faith. 

But UKC isn't the 'general public'; you have to be UKC/UKH registered to vote. 

And it is not a Photography website, it's a climbing/walking/outdoor (etc/etc) site. 

The voting should reflect the UK centric membership ... so the fair result should in fact be along the lines of  "Interesting beats beautiful, local beats foreign, friends beat strangers, etc (kittens beat everything)."  ... although, outdoor dogs probably beat everything (or perhaps owls beat everything?), rather than kittens.

If you want photo critique, go elsewhere.

... and yet ... looking at the weekly 10 tens ... the voting system seems to work!

RobertD: yes, weeding out gross malicious down-voting is needed (and I believe this is done on a routine basis using a mystical algorithm).

I think you have to accept that when dealing with humans. Different people will rate photos on different criteria. I disagree regularly with my wife about which were the best holiday snaps.

Good luck...

I could argue the opposite. 'Simple' means they don't have to invest much mental capital into the activity. Try defining some more specific criteria and require a more thoughtful response and perhaps people will think about 'why' they like (or dislike) a particular image.

Again, some people rate 'content' over 'artfulness' or 'craftmanship'. Inevitable and not necessarily wrong.

You can, but you'll just a 'different' answer rather than a 'better' one. 

I think a binary (like-based) is never going to produce meaningful results with a public (undefined) audience. There are just too many orthogonal dimensions to the whole business of image appreciation. Some are obvious, others less so. There are still images I have which I really like (whatever that means), but I can't put my finger on why, despite having thought about it quite a bit. I doubt I'm particularly exceptional/weird in that sense.

Well, that's exactly what they are! They might however not be an 'artist' or a 'craftsman', but that's a different question.

Indeed. But which ears? The photographer's? The viewer's? And counts in what way? Has value to whom?

I think the perfect UKC photo would be a photo of a painting of Jonny Dawes' kitten on a snowy Blencathra at sunset. 

It may weed out the most gross cases, but I am 99% certain I have had periods when I have suffered systematic malicious voting. As have plenty others. It has usually stopped after a bit, so maybe the algorithm doesn't catch it. It would be good to know how the algorithm works on both this and to rank score the photos, and then to get things changed for the better.

... game the system? To a large extent these algorithms work (?) precisely because their details are secret. In my past (working) life I had some experience of how to disrupt the intended behaviour of ML (Machine Learning, AI) systems, and it's was quite an eye-opener to see how easy it was to get an ML algorithm to produce results opposite to what the designer had intended. OK not 'easy', but quite doable to someone with knowledge in the field and some 'intent'.

But if the system was, as I have proposed, entirely positive so that every vote increased a photo's rank score, it would be impossible to game the system to vote down a photo. The problem would simply disappear.

Gets a 5 from me!!!

Ah, I missed that bit! Speed miss-reading again. As my Dad used to say: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Although I would replace 'nice' with 'constructive'.

Actually you can games a positive-only system, it just takes more work and narrower set of objectives.